⭐Moderate
American Cricket and the Civil War — The Game's Lost American Future, 1861-1865
American club cricket vs baseball
1865-04-09
When the American Civil War began in April 1861, an estimated 10,000 Americans played cricket — more than the entire population of cricketers in Australia. By the time the war ended in April 1865, baseball had effectively replaced cricket as the United States' summer game. The four years of conflict closed clubs, ruined pitches and drove the leading American players into the army; the game would survive in Philadelphia for half a century more but the chance to make cricket America's national sport was lost forever.
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